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Runelords 02.0 - A Town of Sordid Mystery
As they walked around, the group questioned the father about the burning of the old church and her predecessor. She explained that the cause of the fire was unknown, though there was no reason to suspect foul play, and that though the late Father’s remains had been pulled from the scorched ruin, there was no trace ever found of his stunningly beautiful adopted daughter. When they reached the graveyard, they saw nothing immediately out of place, prompting the father to urge them to leave, as the hour was getting late and there was still trouble in the town, not to mention that there might be goblins lurking. Convincing her that they should at least take a look around, they spread out. It was Virgil who found a trampled path of grass off of the main walkway, as though many feet had recently passed by. Eamon tracked the prints to the wall that marked the city limits. After some searching, they found where the prints gathered, as well as two divots about a foot apart, leading them to the conclusion that someone had driven a ladder into the ground. Lifting Luna up onto Virgil’s shoulders, she peered over the side of the wall with the father’s magically-lit staff. On the ground beneath them were more footprints, and she thought that perhaps she could make out another pair of divits. Virgil surmised that, if they were on both sides, they had to have come and left, or they were already in the city when they left and returned. Following the tracks back into the graveyard, they theorized why someone might want to come there. The father attested that those buried here were not interred with valuables, so there shouldn’t be anything to steal. Virgil commented to Khyrralien that there were people who stole bodies. In the other direction, the tracks lead to one of the graveyard’s two tombs. They led directly up to the crypt door, which on closer inspection was ajar, though nothing seemed amiss. According to Father Zantus, the tomb was a small, one-room affair, where past church leaders were laid to rest. The father urged them again to leave; they would look more closely in the morning, but it seemed everything was safe for the moment. Virgil gently insisted that they had come this far, and that they would only take a quick look inside the tomb to be assured that nothing had been disturbed. He walked up to the door and peeked in, only to get the business end of a sword in his face from his troubles. Between the pain and self-recrimination for being so idiotic as to literally stick his face in a trap, Virgil cursed loudly in his native tongue, drawing shocked looks from everyone, not least of all the father. As Luna ran towards him to try and get him to stop cussing vocally in Infernal, Eamon stepped forwards and threw open the door, revealing a skeleton armed with a scimitar and shield, Virgil’s blood on the blade. Khyrralien drew his small bow that he had collected from a goblin, but found that its tiny shafts were unable to pierce the creature’s bones. Luna too found that her bombs, when tossed to avoid harming Eamon, were too weak to damage the skeleton, though she managed to thoroughly disturb the tomb’s dusty contents. Virgil took a swipe at the bony creature with a dogslicer that Khyrralien had lent him, but he received only a solid hit from the skeleton’s shield for his efforts. He withdrew, his wounds significant and his mood black. It was Eamon, wielding the mounted goblin’s horsechopper from his last battle, who fell the skeleton, its brittle bones no match for the angel’s strength. Father Zantus stepped forwards to heal Virgil’s bleeding wounds, albeit somewhat tentatively; he thanked her and apologized for his outburst, though he gave no further explanation as to what dark tongues he had been speaking in. Luna apologized profusely for throwing an explosive into the tomb: she had never been in a combat situation before, and she panicked. Her bomb had set off hundreds of years of dust, filling the room with a thick smokescreen, though it luckily had not damaged anything important. As the dust settled, Eamon entered, along with Luna and the father. Another skeleton lay on the floor, missing an arm and a leg; it was armed like the first, but lacked its animation. Tossed to one side was a cloak: an investigation revealed that it was magic, a robe of bones, used to summon skeletons. However, all of its summoning magic had been spent, and the cloak had been discarded like a used wrapper. Khyrralien collected it as the father gasped: the remains of the late Father had been removed. They left the tomb, with Zantus questioning who would want to steal the late father’s body. She thanked the adventurers for all that they had done, but now it seemed that there was indeed little else threatening the area; she said that she would inform the sheriff and that they would take a closer look through the tomb the next morning. The four agreed, and decided to head for the Rusty Dragon Inn that Ameiko had mentioned: the three men were all a bit wounded, and the bards had exhausted most of their magical reserves. As Khyrralien questioned why Materia’s dragons were rusty, they came to the inn, marked by a rusted-out statue of a dragon over the entrance. Walking inside, they found it to be a cozy place, nigh deserted due to the evening’s events. Ameiko greeted them warmly, glad to hear that the brave travelers who had helped defend the town were in good health. For the help they had given, she offered them a week’s stay on the house. As she gave them a key, Luna inquired as to the man they had helped earlier, and Ameiko confirmed that he had made it in safely, and was in his room. Thanking Ameiko for her generosity, the four retired to their room. Though none of them actually needed sleep, Virgil opted to rest anyways; Luna began the task of teaching Eamon the local language, which Khyrralien listened in on. The next morning, the three men ventured downstairs for breakfast, while Luna ducked away. Eamon discovered sausages, and they learned that Foxglove, whom they wanted to meet, was not known to be a morning person. Luna made her way to the butchers, where she very awkwardly purchased a live chicken; she took it down to the beach, where she had her loud and bloody meal in private. The three Pandemonium soldiers, finished with breakfast, asked Ameiko to let Foxglove know that they would like to meet with him at some point and would be about Sandpoint for the day, set out into the town. The ruined decorations had been cleaned, and the messy business of the previous day had been all but completely swept away. Their first stop was Father Zantus at the church. They entered the cathedral and questioned the father about whether anything new had been discovered, or if anything untoward had happened through the night. She assured them that all was well, but that they could go ask the sheriff if they had other questions, as he had been by already. They asked about the late father, whose remains had been stolen, but she knew little about him, seeing as how she had only recently moved to town in order to take his place in the church. Satisfied that they everything was well, and considering who else they could ask about the dead man, they thanked Zantus and proceeded to Larz the blacksmith, to see if they could outfit themselves with something better than a few broken scimitars and goblin knives. Larz’s forge, the Red Dog, served as a weapons’ shop as well as a tannery. Inside the storefront, there was a wide array of metalwork and leather goods, though there was no one currently tending it. However, two large dogs picked themselves up at their entrance; one went straight to Eamon, lav ashing him with loving attention, while the other one growled pointedly at Virgil. Virgil sidestepped the dog and moved towards the forge in the back, where he could hear work being done, while Khyrralien gushed at a marvelous crossbow that was on display in a case. Calling for Larz, Virgil interrupted his work, to the man’s sighed dismay. Moving to the front, he asked what they wanted. After some bargaining and discussion, he agreed to fix up one of the broken scimitars they had taken from the skeletons in exchange for the other scimitar, the shields, the goblin bow and the goblin knives they had collected. He also offered them a discount on the items in his store, seeing as how they could obviously put them to use defending the town. The beautiful crossbow, inlaid with ivory and enchanted as well, was well out of their price range, but Larz agreed to lend Virgil a shortsword until the scimitar was finished, and the other two selected a shortbow and a longsword that would suit them. They promised to return in a little bit with Luna, who currently held all their money. Stepping out onto the street, Virgil began to call out Luna’s name in the street; Khyrralien, thinking this hilarious, joined in, and Eamon, who had no reason to believe this wasn’t the correct and socially acceptable way of finding someone, did as well. While they had been going about their business in the church and the armory, Luna had been unable to locate them straight away, and so decided to keep to herself for a while. Stepping into the book shop, she decided to look for a book or two to help Eamon with his language studies. Inside, she ran into Brodert Quint, who was pleased to see her again, seeing as how she was both polite and significantly more educated than anyone else in town. They began talking, and the conversation drifted to the topic of the ruined lighthouse. The subject was close to Quint’s heart, as the whole reason he was in town was to research the old ruins, and he took personal offense to the locals’ continuous bids to demolish it; Luna’s disapproval of the destruction of historic landmarks was appreciated. Quint went on to explain what he had learned about the site, namely that it wasn’t even a lighthouse at all. He had reason to believe, based on carvings on the remnants of the walls, that it was in actuality a defensive turret, built to defend the coast from some long-forgotten foe. Wizards would stand inside the tower, and direct a pillar of flame that would scorch their foes. Seeing that Luna was both interested and not dismissive of his claims, he took her to see the lighthouse site, pointing out the worn and half-missing engravings, in addition to a deep well in the center. Looking down, it looked like there might have once been stairs leading around the edge of the deep cylindrical shaft, but they were long gone. Rough currents crashed about: the shaft was flooded with sea water that rushed back and forth with the waves. Mentally sighing at the fact that Virgil would undoubtedly send her down there later to check, she thanked Quint for showing her, and the two made their way back to the bookstore. She spent the rest of the afternoon there, until she could hear people shouting her name on the streets. As Luna came out in a hustle to silence the three of them, deeply embarrassed, another lady also approached the Pandemonium soldiers. The young woman, not even twenty, approached Virgil and implored him to come and help with a terrible rat problem in the basement of her father’s store. Though she stressed the importance of the task, she wished only Virgil to accompany her, and her particular word choices and flirtatious gestures suggested that it wasn’t Virgil’s pest-killing skills that interested her. With a quick explanation to Luna regarding purchases from Larz, Virgil set out with Shadliss Vinder, heading towards the general store. She led him into the basement, to a small cot that had been set up in a secluded corner, and proceeded to take her clothes off. With absolutely no argument, Virgil followed suit. However, just as they were getting into the thick of it, a strangled cry interrupted their love-making. Ven had come downstairs and found them, and based on the look on his face, he was about ready to strangle the man who was in bed with his young daughter. Shadliss pulled the covers up over herself, shocked, but Virgil was unshaken. He moved his hands about hypnotically, using his Infernal ability to hypnotize Ven into going back upstairs and never speaking of the event again. Still fuming, he turned away in a huff and left, thinking better of his original intentions against Virgil. Shadliss looked at him in awe, but Virgil played it off as a minor spell, hopefully saving her some trouble with her father. They quickly dressed; with a quick kiss and a suggestion to try this again in a place where her father was less likely to walk in on them, Virgil left. By the time he caught up with the rest of the group, they had purchased weapons from Larz and were poking about the small town. They decided that the best course of action would be to talk to the sheriff before heading out willy-nilly into the woods hunting for goblins. Heading to the station, they were told that he wouldn’t be in for a while, as he was on duty elsewhere. They opted to wait, hanging around the building until the sheriff returned. When he did, he spoke to them straight away, thanking them for their help in protecting the town and saying that, if they ever wanted to settle down, the town guard would always have a spot for them. They asked a few questions about the father, and learned that he too wasn’t a local, but who had moved to town with his adopted daughter some time earlier. Apparently the girl had suffered under the town’s backwater mentality: her stunning beauty had led to rumours about how her hair could cure warts and other things, and she could barely leave the house without being hassled. Both had died in the fire five years ago, but that was only the beginning of the stories the sheriff had: he mentioned that he had only just become the sheriff at that point, taking over for the last sheriff after his untimely demise. When they questioned how his death had come about, they learned that, at around the same time as the fire, there was a horrifying local tragedy. A man named Jervas Stoot, a local artist who was well known for his beautiful wooden birds that he would carve into signposts, wagons and other objects, went mad, perpetrating a murderous rampage and brutally killing several residents as revenge for perceived slights, including the last sheriff who had caught him in the act. Jervas was apprehended and sent to the nearby city of Medinipur for his trial, where he was found guilty and executed. Just after his arrest was when the fire broke out in the church, adding to the city’s woes. The sheriff warned them against talking about the incident; locals just wanted to forget the horrible tragedy and move on with their lives. They thanked him for the information and brought the topic back to the matter at hand. The sheriff had no suspects as to who the man who riled up the goblins might have been; the woman they relied on for information concerning the movements of the local goblins was a ranger named Shalelu Andosana, who hadn’t been in recently and who they didn’t expect to see until her routes brought her past Sandpoint once more, closer to winter. He gave his blessing to the group for their intentions to go looking for clues in the local forests, but asked that they please give thought to the local citizens: they were frightened after the ruin of the festival, and the presence of strong warriors gave them comfort. He asked that they don’t go too far, and to come in at night in order to give the people a sense of security. They agreed, and thanking the sheriff for all of his help, they walked out into the rapidly falling evening. Category:Rise of the Runelords